


Across the Universe

by lythly



Category: Switched at Birth (TV)
Genre: Deaf, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 12:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lythly/pseuds/lythly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the end of season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across the Universe

"I feel like a fish out of water. I'm a cliche; that's what I've become. A lonely cliche," Bay complained. Emmett didn't mind. He was, in fact, overjoyed to be complained at. So long on the outside watching her hurt, and finally, finally she was talking to him. She paced in and out of the porch light and so he caught parts and pieced together the rest.

"I have this life, where I don't fit, and my art, where no one else seems to fit. I'm always the odd one out. It's like signing, you know? I have to always be thinking in two languages at once."

"Do you ever voice-off?" he asked.

"Voice-off?" she blushed in ignorance, while giving him her best defiant look. He loved the way she covers for her insecurities with fierceness.

"Voice-off. Don't speak, just sign. You're always translating as you go. You have an idea, and then you have to translate before it gets expressed. Voice-off leaves all that aside."

"I have *just* gotten used to the idea of using my hands at all," she scoffed, uncertainly. "I don't know that I could do what you do."

"It's easier, I promise. You were just saying, right? Two languages at once is hard. I couldn't do it. I don't!"

"I'm just... I don't know," Bay continued, "I think in English. How would I turn that off?"

"You paint, don't you? You sign now. You speak French. Now you make yourself do English at the same time. You are always trying to do two things at once," he contrasted, one to the right and one to the left. "Be a Kennish and a Vasquez. Think and paint. Speak and sign. That's why you feel stretched between two things: you don't know where to stand. You can never be stable." He realized he was lecturing. He didn't even know if she was following. But he knew this feeling, and he wanted more than anything to help.

"That *is* the problem," she says and her sarcasm drips from the finger-spelled preposition. "Thanks for the brilliant ... insight."

He grabbed her hand and stilled her pacing, turning her to face him. He waited for her to blink, quieting. She might not understand, not like Daphne would have, but if it could help her he would try. Stepping back, he swapped into story mode, pausing to let her come along.

"The problem is living in two worlds, two cultures, two communities at once: you teeter in the middle, unstable. I can't ever escape the hearing world, but I don't have to accommodate it. I don't have to strech myself all the way over there. I can stand here, on the deaf side, solid. When the hearing world comes along it can engage with me, on my stable footing. The hearing world is all around; it's not like I have to seek it out, you know? So I stay here, where I know who I am. Where I don't have to stretched."

The knot in his stomach tightened, but her eyes sparkled and he plowed on.

"Bay, you don't just teeter in the middle, you have spread yourself across whole different lives, across the universe. If you stretch too far, you might break, snap in half, or becomes so thin I could see right through you. It aches, trying to reach that far.  
"You are special. You can travel between worlds. I think that is amazing, it's part of what I love about you, but it might be easier for you if you didn't try to stand on both at once."

"I ..." she said, and then paused. "I don't think I caught all that. My sign's gotten really rusty."

He couldn't help but grin at her defensiveness; he knew he'd gotten through. "Just try it," he said, "voice-off. Give it a shot."

"You signed fast," she signed, but her mouth remained still. "I didn't understand, why? Because you sign too fast."

"You understood enough," he shrugged, "see?"

"So what do I do? There are these two worlds, where do I stand? I know this will never be my world."

"Try hopping back and forth. Sproing," he showed her jumping. "Sproing, back and forth. Like a bunny."

"Very funny."

"Seriously. That's what voice-off is: jumping over here for a little while. You're just visiting, but it's easier to stand than balance precariously in between. It's less work."

Bay looked behind him and startled; he spun around as her dad came out. "Inside" he ways saying, and then something else. Bay turned to reply and her dad spoke and signed, "now!"

When Bay turned back to Emmett his eyebrows were wide in disbelief. "Wow, he must be pissed; he just reached off his tiny little world!" 

That got a grin from her. "Goodnight," she signed and spoke.

"Sproing," he showed her jumping back to the hearing world. "Goodnight."

As she opened the door she turned just enough to sign, "thank you," and then she was again beyond reach.


End file.
